The Tax Lists of 1725, published in: Max Grunwald, Hamburg's German Jews up to the Dissolution of the Triple Congregation 1811, pp. 191-194

Source Description

The present documentary source is a brief excerpt from tax lists of the
early modern period, reproduced in Max Grunwald’s
1904 local history: “Hamburgs deutsche Juden bis zur Auflösung
der Dreigemeinde 1811” [“Hamburg’s German Jews up
to the Dissolution of the Triple Congregation 1811”]. The tax lists printed
therein cover the years 1716, 1725, and 1734. The 1716 list records approximately 100 entries along with the
amount of tax paid. For the year 1725 there are
about 700 entries, detailing individual occupational activities, residential
locations, and reported assets. For 1734 only the
124 Jews of Wandsbek are recorded; in addition, the total number of
Jews in Hamburg and Altona is
specified. Because of its relative comprehensiveness, the tax list of 1725 will be taken as an example. Consideration of
the tax records of 1725 recommends itself because
they were compiled after the exemption from regulations occasioned by the
plague and war years but before the economic crisis of the late 1720s. Thus, they afford a
representative view into a few aspects of Jewish life in Hamburg during the
early modern era.

Tax lists were compiled by the elders of the
Jewish
congregation, before whom all Jews had to appear every three
or four years in order to declare, under oath, their total assets. On this
basis the elders decided the amount of tax owed. These varied because the
Senate and
city assembly’s
determination of the annual amount of tax to be paid was
periodically revised. The congregation’s internal bureaucratic procedure
served the purposes of collecting, storing, controlling, and justifying the
individual taxpayer’s contribution. The tax lists published by Grunwald have been
digitized and are accessible online in the Frankfurt Freimann-Collection.

The tax documentary records
afford important insights into the family relations, occupational structure,
income distribution, and residential districts of the Jewish population in
the early modern
era.